1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a method and apparatus for modeling content states in business processes, and more particularly to providing overlays to illustrate content states in business processes.
2. Description of the Related Art
FIG. 1 illustrates related art business process model 100. Referring to FIG. 1, related art business process model 100 includes inbound process interface 110 at the beginning and outbound process interface 180 at the end of the control flow. Throughout the process illustrated in business process model 100, different steps, including decision step 130, step one 120, step two 140, step three 150, step four 160, and step five 170 may be implemented and executed. The various steps may include any known, foreseeable, or related business decision steps. These steps may contain content objects.
Content objects are structured or unstructured data, stored in a content repository, and managed by a content management system. A content object might have different states (such as “draft”, “read for approval”, “approved”, “published”) and/or access control definitions (i.e. who is allowed to read, modify or delete the content object).
In today's complex enterprise-wide business processes, content objects are accessed, used and managed by back-end systems, such as workflow management systems, ERP and CRM systems, BI tools and the like. While conventional content management applications in a content-centric environment provide direct access and management functions to end users, this interaction is now performed more often through additional, business oriented applications.
As a consequence, end-users no longer interact with the content management system directly, but now access and manipulate content objects indirectly through the business oriented back-end applications. Because these (driving) back-end systems also include management functions, a notion of “state” and “access right” to data, an “intelligent” and flexible way to integrate with content objects needs to synchronize access definitions and state properly.
Furthermore, compliance and governance impose restrictions where content objects and associated back-end systems must properly work together in a controlled and defined way to satisfy certain requirements. Today, these distinct systems typically manage state and access controls independent from each other. For example, a content object storing information about a claim application is managed by a content management system. The content object is also used in a business process, managed by a workflow management system.
In some cases, the workflow model might include a human task step where a person in charge has to work on the content object. In this situation, it is important that the person in charge gets the access rights to the associated content object that he or she needs in order to complete the defined task. Completing the task in the workflow management system might also require a state change of the content object (for example, it should be set to “ready for approval”).
However, conventional solutions require extensive manual implementation for interaction between (conceptually) independent software components.